Facebook Paid People to Listen to your Audio Messages

Facebook has just admitted that it paid workers to listen to its users’ personal audio messages on the Messenger app. Facebook hired third-party contractors to listen to private audio chats.

A few of the contracted employees hired by Facebook told Bloomberg that they were ordered to transcribe audio recordings but were not told where were these recordings recorded and how they were obtained. They said that they heard conversations, sometimes vulgar ones but were not told the purpose behind this work.

Also read: Some users are facing problems while accessing Facebook and Instagram

As per Facebook, they did this to improve their product and services that includes artificial intelligence.

Facebook claims that the audio messages were anonymized before the contractors listened to it.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the company “paused human review of audio more than a week ago.” Facebook said that this practice was quite common in the tech industry.

Facebook said that it did not listen to the user’s microphone without device permission and explicit activation. 

Back in 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to a Senate committee that the company is not spying on your conversations.

In order to disable Voice to Text in Messenger, click on the messenger app button, open the conversation, and then click on the name on top. In the “Chat Details” menu, click on “Automatic Voice to Text” on or off for only this chat.